Authors: Alan Bricklin
He took a breath and focused his eyes on the scenery around
him, the quaint quarter of the old town and the pleasant looking wooded slopes
that surrounded it helping to mitigate the uncomfortable feeling with which he
started the day, although the greatest portion of solace came from the analysis
just completed, because now he knew where to direct his energy. Gerhard and the
plutonium had to get out of Germany, and if he was trying to bypass Julian it
was likely that he would not let it out of his site. Bringing it into
Switzerland would not be too difficult, but keeping it a secret from agents of the
Allies would be near impossible. To the west, American and French forces
controlled the countryside, and to the east, the Russians were rapidly
advancing. That left Italy to the south as the only feasible exit route, which
meant that Gerhard would have to transport the material pretty much due south
from Munich, through the area around Innsbruck and the Tyrol. Julian had
contacts in northern Italy who had no love for the Germans and, more
importantly, were always interested in lining their pockets with American
dollars or British pounds, no questions asked. He stood up, all thoughts of the
beauty of the local scenery gone from his head, and walked off to begin his
plans, although he kept in mind that still the most likely eventuality was that
the original strategy worked out by the two of them would eventually be played
out to its conclusion. But, he thought, it never hurts to be prepared.
* *
Fifty miles north of London, in Buckinghamshire, lay Bletchley
Park, a lovely Victorian manor house built in 1882 in the small town of
Bletchley. Since 1938 it had been the home of the Government Code and Cipher
School and was the location where the ultra secret German Enigma code had been
broken through the efforts of a group of brilliant, dedicated men and women, including
the mathematician Alan Turing, one of the fathers of the modern computer. As
the war effort grew and more branches of the intelligence community found a
home at Bletchley, numerous out buildings or "huts" as they were
called, sprang up on the grounds, and at its height, upwards of 10,000 people
were employed, their frenetic activity in stark contrast to the bucolic
setting.
Hulbart was unaware of any of this, or even his exact
whereabouts for that matter, as he was escorted from his quarters to one of the
nearby Quonset huts to meet with the interrogators who would debrief him.
Walking along the path, he found the setting peaceful, although not as
spectacular as Norway, and if he made any comparisons during the short stroll,
Bletchley Park was not found wanting, the ambience of the English countryside
being what his soul required at this time after the many months of stress and
uncertainty at Norsk Hydroelectric. On arriving at his destination, a small,
nondescript metal hut still dripping the morning dew from its corrugated roof,
he was ushered into a room that seemed to occupy approximately half of the
building, an extravagant utilization of space, he thought, especially during
wartime. In actuality, most of the workers, both civilian and military, had
been dismissed or reassigned, their primary task having been accomplished, and
there was ample room to allow a bit of indulgence.
Having opened the door for him, the corporal who had fetched
him from his small room withdrew, presumably, Hulbart thought, to remain at
guard. Two men were seated inside, one at a plain wooden desk and the other in
a comfortable looking upholstered chair, one that looked like it belonged in
someone's sitting room, with a smallish end table next to it. Its surface was
completely covered with a pile of notebooks and maps, all of which seemed in
imminent danger of sliding off and cascading onto the floor. The occupant of
the chair, a man of middle age with abundant wavy hair streaked with gray, and
dressed in civilian clothes, looked up from the pad on which he was jotting
down something, motioned for Hulbart to wait, then returned to his writing,
occasionally pausing with the capped end of the pen at his lips, apparently
pondering some point, before resuming his notes. After several minutes, during
which Hulbart glanced around the room in a state of mild discomfiture, the man
capped his pen and returned it to his shirt pocket, then laid the pad on top of
the pile on the table top, the penultimate piece in a precariously growing pyramid,
and finally placed his glasses at the summit before standing and walking to
Hulbart, whose eyes remained focused on the assemblage next to the chair,
expecting it to collapse any second.
"Hulbart Gerlach, welcome to England." He extended
his arm, a smile on his face as he gripped the scientist's hand in a firm
handshake, nodding his head as if to say that yes, you are finally out of Nazi
Germany and everything will be alright now. "Call me Franklin."
"Like the American president."
"Exactly. This is Captain Wesley," indicating the
other person in the room.
Wesley stood and acknowledged Hulbart with a perfunctory nod
before returning to his seat behind what Hulbart could now see was actually a
table rather than a desk; some sort of work table, he thought, its surface
bearing nicks, scratches and other signs of long years of use. A typewriter,
one edge propped up with folded paper against the uneven topography of the
surface, occupied a position directly in front of where the young looking
Captain sat. He wore khaki fatigues, and although he had been introduced as a
Captain, no sign of rank was visible. In addition to the typewriter, there were
several notebooks, maps and writing implements, all arranged neatly on the
surface, and Hulbart had to suppress a smile at the contrast between the two
men.
"Pull up a chair. As you can see we've plenty of
them." He swept his arm around the expanse of the room, which contained at
least a dozen chairs of all types as well as one plush looking sofa and various
other pieces. Looking around, Hulbart realized he must be in what was once some
sort of store room, the repository of odd bits of furniture, the central
portion having now been cleared out to make room for interrogations, while the
periphery held the remnants of its former function. He chose one that looked
comfortably padded—— no telling how long he might be here ——
but was located close enough to be easily moved in place before the two
Englishmen. "I trust someone gave you breakfast. Would you like something
to drink?"
"No, I'm fine. And they brought me breakfast. Thank you
for asking," he said in quite passable English.
"Good, then let's begin." Franklin returned to his
easy chair, making himself comfortable as he fixed his glasses in place and
picked up the note pad on which he had been writing, thumbing through a few
pages before continuing. "So, you went to Norway to work at the Norsk
Hydroelectric plant in Vermork?"
"Yes, except that it's not correct to say that I went
there when I was really ordered to go there. I had no choice."
"Exactly how were you ordered? Did someone come to your
house and drag you away?" And so the long tedious business of
interrogation and debriefing began, the continual digging for details, the same
questions repeated in different ways looking for inconsistencies or outright
lies.
Cheese, bread, some sliced meat and a beer for each of them
were brought in for lunch, the questions continuing while they ate and even
during a short break when Hulbart was allowed to stretch his legs in front of
the hut for a few minutes. It was mid afternoon when the following exchange
took place. "So, you were working as a chemical engineer at Norsk, where
they made plutonium for the atomic bomb."
"Not exactly," Hulbart replied.
"What do you mean 'not exactly'?"
And Hulbart Gerlach explained what he meant. And the
explanation and the questions it engendered went on for three hours. And the
Captain's eyes grew wider, and Franklin found himself stopping often to moisten
his dry mouth. Finally he said, "We'll continue tomorrow. The corporal
will show you back to your quarters."
When he had left the hut, they turned to each other and the
captain spoke first. "I've got to tell the C.O."
"I'll go with you. We need to get a message to
London."
As they rounded a bend in the road, Larry noticed a vehicle in the
distance, a truck of some sort judging by its size, but other than that he
could tell very little except that it must be traveling slower than he was
since he was coming up on it and would soon overtake it. Although they had been
lucky since leaving the barn in not meeting up with any of the citizenry or,
even more fortunately, any of the military, it was a situation that Larry knew
could not last. He eased off the accelerator while he thought about how to
proceed.
"Why are you slowing?"
"There's a small truck ahead, not moving very fast.
Could be military, a commercial transport or just some local farm vehicle.
Before we catch up to it I want to decide what I'm going to do in each of the
situations." The latter two possibilities were of no real concern to him,
mainly because he was in a SS staff car and wearing a military tunic. Any
civilian farmer would show the utmost deference and would actually prefer no interaction
at all; but a military vehicle, although not necessarily a great danger,
presented the risk of someone wanting to make contact, if only in a social
context, and that could be trouble. The longer they were on the road, in plain
sight, the more they would be vulnerable to the vagaries of chance, a fear that
was well founded.
"What if we pull off the road and wait until the truck
is out of sight?"
"We'd be too exposed. Too many chances for someone to
start asking questions or to see if perhaps we might need help. I'm going to
get closer and see what it is. If it's military, we can just speed by with what
I hope is a not unexpected, arrogant indifference. Climb in the back and try to
look important. Oh, and hand me the cap on the seat, please."
Maria hiked up her skirt so she could move her legs enough
to make the necessary contortions to accomplish the change of position, and as
she maneuvered herself into the rear of the car Larry glanced her way and was
rewarded by a glimpse of shapely legs and an agile body.
Adjusting the hat on his head, Larry saw Maria in the rear
view mirror hastily applying makeup to her face, and, a moment later, sitting
erect with a realistically haughty expression on her face, looking every bit
the woman of a high ranking officer being driven on some errand or outing of
great importance to her. They would make a perfect tableau as they sped by and
passed whatever lay ahead on the road. He increased the speed, the distance
from the vehicle ahead rapidly closing, and in less than a minute he could see
that it was a military convoy truck, its canvas top enclosing a dozen or so
troops, and he could also see the reason for its snail like pace. In front of
it was an oversized farm wagon filled to overflowing with hay and carrying
several farmhands, seemingly children from the quick look Larry had as he
pulled the car slightly to the left. There was no place for the wagon to pull
off the road, drainage ditches paralleling both sides of the road also
preventing the truck from passing it. However, he judged that there was just
enough space for his car to pass if he was careful. He would have to drive more
slowly than he wanted, but it seemed to be the only way. He prepared to hit the
accelerator to get quickly into position, when the soldiers sitting at the rear
of the truck started pointing in his direction. His stomach knotted, and
indecision welled up in his mind before he realized that although they were
pointing in his general direction, the angle of their arms was upward, towards
the sky, and at the same time he heard the noise. There is nothing like the
high pitched whine of a fighter aircraft diving out of the heavens to instill
fear, to make one feel like a small field mouse who hears, high above, the
flapping wings of a raptor, a sound that it instinctively knows, without having
to look, is a harbinger of death. Icy fingers wrapped around his heart.
Maria, too, heard the shrill scream of the straining engine,
and she frantically threw herself from one window to the other trying to see
into the sky above. "Lorenz, what is it? I can't see anything!"
Before he could answer, a new sound assaulted them ——
the staccato discharge of fifty caliber machine guns as a track of impacts
swept by the car taking out the right front tire in a shower of metal and
sparks before continuing up the road and tearing through the cover of the
infantry transport. The driver of the truck, apparently not experienced at the
art of dodging attacks from planes, sped up while the soldiers realized their
best chance was to bail and scatter rather than remain in a concentrated
target, a course now rendered difficult by the increasing speed of the truck.
Maria and Larry were thrown forward as their car came grinding to a stop and
pivoted a quarter turn clockwise, Larry banging his head first on the
windshield then on the window. With smoke swirling around the car, he looked to
the left and saw the transport almost on top of the farm wagon, and at the same
time heard the Doppler shift of the plane's engine as it roared by, only to be
replaced by the whistle of the incoming bomb released with deadly accuracy by
the pilot. The fact that their wheel had been shot out, causing the car to stop
so suddenly, saved their lives as the distance between them and the speeding
truck increased rapidly.
"Get down!" Larry shouted while heaving himself
over the seat like a high jumper, landing on top of Maria and throwing her into
the space between the front and rear seats, placing his body over hers for
protection. The bomb detonated immediately to the rear of the transport,
lifting it into the air and peeling apart metal and bodies before depositing on
the road what little remained in a formless heap of flaming debris. Bits of
debris impacted on the body and windshield of the car sounding like a sudden,
fierce hail storm, but fortunately causing them no injury. Larry quickly helped
Maria up. "We've got to get out of this car. Our best chance is the ditch
by the road. Come on."